RTFC of the Week: Tireless Hunters (LotR LCG)

I’ve been playing quite a lot of two-handed LotR recently, with my Ladies wot Quest deck combined with a Blokes wot Engage deck. Those Ladies really, really don’t like to fight and sometimes quests are equally determined to send enemies their way. The card we’re going to look at today takes care of that problem quite elegantly.

So let’s take a look shall we…

Bash his skull in!

Errata

No errata applies to this card.

Unpacking Tireless Hunters

Tireless Hunters lets you drag over an enemy from another player (not the staging area), and then discards a single shadow card from that enemy. Due to the nature of the timing window when this can be played, that enemy is then going to attack you but doesn’t get another shadow card.

As the card explicitly states ‘Engage that enemy’, any ‘when engaged’ effects will trigger (good or bad), such as Mablung’s resource, Pippin’s card draw or any number of bad effects on enemy cards.

So, the order of play goes like this:

Optional engagement happens

All the usual ‘when engaged’ effects will trigger

Normal engagement checks happen

All the usual ‘when engaged’ effects will trigger

Enemies get shadow cards

At this point you play Tireless Hunters, pulling the enemy to you and getting rid of its shadow card.

Any forced effects from engagement will trigger and then any responses to the engagement trigger.

The enemy will attack (without shadow card!) and you’ll have to defend as normal; you can use Sentinel etc as this is an entirely normal attack.

The 1-point cost for the event is equivalent to that required to cancel a shadow effect with Hasty Stroke, so is baseline good for that effect alone. However, the key reason to play this card is so that you can pull enemies away from players that aren’t built to deal with them, either that turn or just in general (perhaps they quested to the max and are all exhausted now).

As you pull the enemies before they attack you can manage a situation where you can take enemies from the first player, unlike say Tactics Aragorn where player order is important.

What makes this card better

Anything that gives you a benefit from engaging an enemy multiplies the benefit and efficiency of the card.

Mablung’s resource will replace the resource spent; Pippin will replace the card played.

The various Dunedain allies that ramp based upon the number of enemies engaged with the player, will also benefit.

In the two decks that I linked above, it allows me to feel confident in building the questing deck with no real capability to defend thus using a deck slot in one deck to free up slots in the other. It allows me to use both players’ optional engagement to reduce threat in the staging area, pull to the Dunedain deck and not have to worry about shadow cards on that attacker.

I also don’t need to build too much Sentinel into my second deck, which frees up deck building.

What makes this card worse?

Anything that punishes engaging enemies, such as a Keyword that triggers on engagement or those ‘place X resources on Y when you engage’ enemies from the Greyhavens.

There are other alternatives for this card as well. Hasty Stroke simply cancels the shadow card if that is the key intent. Feint stops the attacker, and then Ranged can help shoot them down. Sentinel allows blocking on behalf of the other party. These types of cards are fairly common in builds, and especially a tactics build.

So Tireless Hunter really needs a level of synergy to make it worth bringing to the party; the theme of the Dunedain being triggered from engaged enemies makes it worth it.

Oh, and there is zero point playing this in a solo deck!

Conclusion

Tireless Hunters works well in Dunedain deck that is destined to be played in multiplayer. Particularly in three or four player where other decks might not be built to deal with threats as they focus on their own role.

A single resource is manageable, and it should be considered in any deck running Tactics Mablung.